


For Though He Could Not Stop For Death

by actualkoschei



Series: Averted Heresy AU [1]
Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors
Genre: Averted Heresy AU, Brotherly Affection, Fix-It, Gen, Implied Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 10:37:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6701491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualkoschei/pseuds/actualkoschei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ferrus Manus and Corax after the (failed) Dropsite Massacre.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Though He Could Not Stop For Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WahlBuilder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/gifts).



Death comes for all, the Terran superstitious say. But when it came for Ferrus Manus, it spat him back out. He still was not sure why. Perhaps he would never know. For the first few days, wandering the surface of Istvaan V soaked in his own blood, perhaps he had cared why it was that he lived. No longer.

 

He found Corax first. His brother's blue and black armour was tented by shells and bullets, mottled with blood, and the front sheared by what might be Lightning Claws, but he was alive, seeminly unharmed.

 

“Ferrus!” Corvus leapt over to him the instant he looked up, tearing off his helmet to show his bruised face and knotted hair. His arms were around Ferrus immediately, and that is shocking, coming from his usually restrained and quiet brother. “Oh, thank Terra! I thought you were dead! I saw your throat cut!”

 

“Not well enough, it seems.” Ferrus said, and his voice is rough and laboured, his gauntleted hand going to the ragged, barely knitted together slash that ran around the front and sides of his neck. “He was... there was something wrong with Fulgrim.”

 

Ferrus shuddered at the memory. No colour in his beloved brother's cheeks, gone ghostly white, and a hectic, ghostly fire in his deep violet eyes. And the weakness, now that had shocked Ferrus more than anything else. Fulgrim had almost seemed to struggle to lift his sword, where before he had moved with it as graceful as a Terran ballerina moved across the stage. He was stumbling, trembling, as though exhausted, or fighting himself. Now that, that frightened Ferrus far more than to see his lover raise arms against him.

 

Corvus nodded, dark eyes serious, resting his head against Ferrus's armoured shoulder. “Konrad, too. He... he attacked me.” Corvus sounded as though he could not believe it. “But I saw his face. He looked frightened.” _And even that, that is not exactly the right way to describe it,_ Corvus thinks. Konrad had looked terrified, but that was not all. He looked pleading. As though he was begging Corvus to help him. The same way he looked after the worst of his visions, curled up in Corvus's lap all ragged. _And where was Night Haunter?_

 

Corvus shook himself out of it, focusing back on Ferrus. “I can't find Vulkan.” They called his brother the Immortal, the Fire-Born. He had vanished from Corvus's sight into a haze of flamer fire and singing shells. But he could not be _dead_ , no, that was unthinkable. Corvus forced the thought down into the back of his mind. Ferrus had been beheaded before his very eyes, and now there he stood in front of him. Vulkan would have to have survived.

 

“We will find him.” Ferrus promised him. “He will be here somewhere. I have seen so many survivors, against all odds. He must be among them.” A Scout Marine, that is what had shocked Ferrus the most of all the things he had seen since his not-death. An Iron Hand Scout, with only light armour, and his helmet gone, with only a gas-mask in its place. He was missing an arm from the shoulder, raggedly amputated with what looked like it might have been a brother's chainsword. But he was alive, sitting with a group of older survivors, and then running to his primarch when he caught sight of him. Ferrus had held the boy while he cried, and offered him some measure of comfort. As much as he could. If that boy could survive, had survived, then his brother must be out there somewhere.

 

The sun was starting to set above them. It looked like blood, the weak sun of the Istvaan system struggling to show through the cloud of dust and smoke hanging above the planet. Corvus and Ferrus lay down side by side, in the shelter of an overhanging rock outcrop. Ferrus closed his eyes, trying to get some sleep, and he was almost there, when he heard a strange sound, something that made him stir back into wakefulness. “Corvus? Are you crying?”

 

Corax did not lift his head. “Yes.” His voice was choked. “I could try to make excuses for why, but I am sure I do not need to.”

 

“No. I understand.” Ferrus rolled onto his back. “Come over here.” He pulled Corax as close as he could with the bulk of their armour in the way. “It's going to be alright, my brother. We'll find Vulkan. We'll make it alright.”

 

 


End file.
